Opponents of Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline project are preparing for a legal showdown with the federal government in 2014, even though the project's Joint Review Panel has yet to make its final recommendations.

The project would run directly through the riding of NDP MP and Opposition House Leader Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.), an outspoken critic of the project and intervenor in the panel's hearings.

Mr. Cullen said that he doesn't have much faith in the panel's forthcoming recommendations following the major revisions to the environmental assessment process in the 2012 federal budget. He said that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government has made the Joint Review Panel's work "meaningless.'

"Mid-way through this whole process they brought in a law that retroactively changed the rules so that the panel no longer had final say,' Mr. Cullen told The Hill Times. "We thought we were engaging in ...